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Robots have it rough up here at 10,580 feet on the Greenland ice sheet, 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The cold drains batteries. The human handlers push hard because their research season is measured in mere weeks. And for Yeti, which arrived here at Summit Station in the back of an LC-130H on July 15, life is destined to be dangerous. It’s an autonomous robot whose main job will be to roll out ahead of heavy machinery, and use ground-penetrating radar to scout for dangerous crevasses in the ice.

Within two years, similar robots may deploy on lonely, cold missions to collect data for scientists to analyze from a distance. The Dartmouth team behind Yeti, led by engineering professor Laura Ray, has designed software to help the robot and a solar-powered cousin called Cool Robot work as versatile mules for varied sensor packages.